I've been wondering a lot lately (particularly after that biography issue in that one book from the '90s) if that isn't more about him getting an easy ride through college by lying about being a Muslim from Kenya than what his actual performance was. Unless he flunked or nearly flunked, why hide his academic performance?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chuck58

obama isn't unintelligent. What he appears to me is......Lazy.

I think we aren't seeing his grades because they were barely passing, due to laziness. It's pretty obvious that some of his comments reflect the fact that he doesn't know his subject. Wasn't it a state of the union speech that he said something about the constitution guaranteeing 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Maybe that's changed recently, but my copy of the declaration of Independence is the document in which those words are written. My copy is pretty old, several decades, so they might have re-written it :concern:

I think he was just a lazy student who played on his race and he coasted through school doing just enough to get by, and his grades reflect that attitude - which doesn't appear to have changed.

I think that it's a combination of both, plus a heavy dose of narcissism. The Wikipedia summary of narcissism causes is interesting:

The cause of this disorder is unknown, according to Groopman and Cooper. However, they list the following factors identified by various researchers as possibilities:[2]

An oversensitive temperament at birth

Excessive admiration that is never balanced with realistic feedback

Excessive praise for good behaviors or excessive criticism for bad behaviors in childhood

Overindulgence and overvaluation by parents

Being praised for perceived exceptional looks or abilities by adults

Severe emotional abuse in childhood

Unpredictable or unreliable caregiving from parents

Valued by parents as a means to regulate their own self-esteem

Some narcissistic traits are common and a normal developmental phase. When these traits are compounded by a failure of the interpersonal environment and continue into adulthood, they may intensify to the point where NPD is diagnosed.[8] Some psychotherapists believe that the etiology of the disorder is, in Freudian terms, the result of fixation to early childhood development.

Now, think about Obama's childhood. His father abandoned the family when he was an infant. His mother was a leftist intellectual who eventually abandoned him with his grandparents. I think that this covers the unreliable caregiving part. Obama was also treated as something special because of his racial background. His grandfather turned him over to a Marxist agitator in order to foster his identity as an aggrieved member of a minority, which tells us that he spent most of his life surrounded by people who saw him as a demographic, rather than as an individual, and he's been able to get away with a tremendous amount because of that. Again, not the references to excessive praise and a lack of realistic feedback, not to mention the use of a child as a surrogate for parental self-esteem. But, where this really becomes an issue is when you look at the signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

Those symptoms are Obama to a "T". The resume enhancements are just part of a larger pattern of exaggeration and fantasy, but we also see it when he takes credit for the actions of others, such as the SEAL Team raid on Bin Laden's compound. The other symptoms are just as obvious. Look at the list of people that Obama has thrown under the bus in his rise. Look at the thin-skinned response to criticism. The habitual overspending on vacations and meals is typical of wanting the "best" of everything. Obama is a textbook case of narcissism, and the implications for America are frightening.